New South China Mall: Too big to fail

Six years after the world's largest shopping mall
opened, over
99% of its shops remain empty. And yet the mall
continues to expand.

Such a perfect day. Another beautiful day in a perfect world. The sky
is blue and pollution-free. Does it make you feel happy? It should,
but it's not enough. Ah, yes, go shopping and have a stroll in…

"…sunny and zealous South California Coast and San Francisco,
clear and enchanting Amsterdam, elegant and romantic Champs-
Elysees Ave (sic) in Paris, mysterious and passionate Venice,
sensational and beautiful Caribbean coast and adventurous
Tropical Rain Forest. Such zones display the world's famous
water scenes and create relax and romantic shopping and living
environment: you can enjoy yourself and have delicious foods while
shopping and also enjoy cultural communication and body-building
while in diversion. In terms of humanistic concern, it allows you to
enjoy anywhere and delivers to you the higher spiritual enjoyment
besides the creature comfort.
"
(Unedited quote from the New South China Mall
website)

Six years after the 2005 opening ceremony of the New South
China Mall, Living City, its 892,000 square metres still afford it
the title of the largest shopping centre in the world. Yet less than
1 per cent of the 2,350 planned shops are occupied. Five escalators
are running in this megalomaniac project that has burst onto the
former farmlands of Dongguan's suburbs, in the rich southern
province of Guangdong. Most of its space has never been occupied
and is still in the state it was in six years ago when the mall was
inaugurated. Empty halls and lines of shop windows in which
metal structures outline possible walls and electrical wires
draped from the ceiling indicate their intended use as shops. Many
promises of a bright future. Broken light bulbs and traces of various
attempts of bringing life to the concrete. Footsteps, cigarette butts
and food packaging left over by some wandering lost soul: the
archaeological terrain of an idealised consumerist society.

The Chinese government's emphasis on encouraging economic
growth fosters the birth of gargantuan real-estate projects. The
decrepit hallways of the New South China Mall express a unique
form of decay: the decline of an architectural mash-up before its
success, even before birth.

Still, all this misfortune hasn't dampened private and public
investors' enthusiasm, and the mall survives indefinitely thanks to
an architectural equivalent of life support. Meticulous employees
clean the canal every day with chemicals and nets for a daily wage
that would buy them a single ride on one of the mall's attractions.
At the Amazing World funfair the music booms and passengerless
roller coasters fly. Gondolas cruise. A woman attempts to feed
goldfish with milk from bottles. Neighbourhood residents come to
do their morning t'ai chi exercise and practice martial arts. Ticket
vendors doze in their cabins, while others kill time rehearsing
party tricks. Foreign reporters are greeted warmly by the security
services. Migrant workers labour through night shifts to complete
the construction of the Venice and Amsterdam sections, in the
undying hope that the once-hoped-for 70,000 daily visitors might
materialise.

China may have undergone three decades of transformation since
it opened up to the outside world, yet it still hasn't lost certain
traits inherited from its communist years, such as the compulsion
to chase superlative statistics and a sense of grandeur offset by a
streak of surrealism. Come over and enjoy this perfect day. "South
China Mall, the shopping heaven, amazing world, illusion city and
a commercial legend of new century is expecting your presence."
Grégoire Basdevant@GregoireB